Free Republic

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea called U.S. President Barack Obama a "monkey" and blamed Washington on Saturday for Internet outages it has experienced during a confrontation with the United States over the hacking of the film studio Sony Pictures. The National Defense Commission, the North's ruling body chaired by state leader Kim Jong Un, said Obama was responsible for Sony's belated decision to release the action comedy "The Interview", which depicts a plot to assassinate Kim.

Mayor de Blasio held court on Friday with ringleaders of the city protests that have led to cop assaults and other mayhem — lending a sympathetic ear as they ticked off their demands. Hizzoner had tried to keep the location of his meeting with the members of Justice League NYC a secret, but reporters discovered it was at the Midtown offices of a union connected to the one that employs a man charged with busting an NYPD lieutenant’s nose on the Brooklyn Bridge. “They have a list of demands, some which I agree with, some which I don’t,” de Blasio...

NEW YORK (RNS) In the latest clash between the Catholic hierarchy and one of the church’s leading anti-abortion crusaders, New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan accused the Rev. Frank Pavone of continuing to stonewall on financial reforms, and Dolan said he is cutting ties with his group, Priests for Life. In a Nov. 20 letter to other U.S. bishops, Dolan said he did not know if the Vatican would now step in to take action against the New York-based priest, who for years has angered various bishops by rejecting oversight of the organization by church authorities and for refusing to sort...

A federal judge has found parts of President Obama's immigration executive actions unconstitutional, in an opinion delivered as part of a separate immigration case not directly tied to the policy changes. The opinion filed Tuesday by U.S. District Court Judge Arthur Schwab, in Pennsylvania, still marks the first court opinion to tackle Obama's immigration announcement. He said Obama's immigration actions are invalid and effectively count as "legislation" from the Executive Branch.

The situation between New York City police and the Mayor’s office has clearly reached a critical point. While they have disagreed on several things in the recent past, there always seemed to be some level of cooperation remaining, or at least the willingness to maintain a public patina of such when the cameras were turned on. But after Bill de Blasio’s response in the wake of Eric Garner’s death, it seems that city’s finest have had enough. A police union in the Big Apple has asked their members to sign a waiver stating their wishes that Hizonor refrain from...

The county autopsy report on Michael Brown largely corroborates the account of the shooting given by Ferguson, Mo., Police Officer Darren Wilson. Two independent doctors reviewed the report from St. Louis County for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, KTVI reported. According to the report, the first shot fired from Wilson’s gun was at close range and hit Brown’s right thumb, adding weight to Wilson’s testimony that the two struggled for the gun in Wilson’s police cruiser. Previous reports confirmed that Brown’s blood was found on Wilson’s gun and uniform, as well as inside the car.

A cat with an uncanny ability to detect when nursing home patients are about to die has proven itself in around 50 cases by curling up with them in their final hours, according to a new book.

By Joel Leyden Israel News AgencyUPDATED … Jerusalem, Israel — November 18 … In a well planned terrorist attack this morning, two Islamic terrorists, one with a pistol and another with an axe and knife entered a synagogue in the Har Nof area of Jerusalem. The first Jewish victim wearing Tallis and Tephillin was shot in the head. The terrorists then ran into various prayer rooms and a Beit Medrash. A paramedic trying to deal with the wounded was shot in the leg before two policemen shot two of the terrorists dead. A search is presently being conducted for their...

According to Onan Coca, "Dr. David Pook is a professor at Granite State College in Manchester, New Hampshire. He's also the chair of the History Department and one of the authors of the Common Core standards. He was a guest at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics when he opened up on his reasons for participating in the creation of the Common Core standards." So what were his reasons? You are about to learn the motivation behind Common Core through one of its authors. The truth is, not surprisingly to some, that Common Core is very racist and very political....

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — Republican Dan Sullivan won Alaska's U.S. Senate race, defeating first-term incumbent Democrat Mark Begich. Sullivan led Begich by about 8,100 votes on Election Night last week and held a comparable edge after election workers had counted about 20,000 absentee, early-voted and questioned ballots late Tuesday. Thousands more ballots remained to be counted, but the results indicated that Begich could not overcome Sullivan's lead. The Alaska seat was initially considered key to the Republicans' hopes of taking control of the U.S. Senate, but that goal was accomplished before the Alaska race was decided. Sullivan, in a statement,...

Former Navy SEAL Robert O'Neill said in an interview with The Washington Post that he was the one who fired the final shot to kill Osama bin Laden in 2011. The 38-year-old Montanan also said that other SEAL team members were involved in the raid, including Mark Bissonnette, who detailed the group's experiences in his memoir, "No Easy Day." O'Neill, who had been serving as a SEAL for 15 years at the time of the bin Laden raid, had participated in other missions before -- but he said he feared this mission would be his most difficult. I didn't think...

There is one set of numbers in this breakdown of North Carolina early voting that really jumps out.  This year 52.2% of early voters in North Carolina were age 60 or over.  In 2012, that percentage was 35.5%.  Young voters were scarce among early voters this election.  In 2012, 13.2 percent of the early voters were ages 18-29.  This year the percentage fell to 5.1%, while there was a drop from 21.8 to 13.7% in the age 30-44 age bracket. We won't know what this all means until tonight, but I suspect that these numbers may be more significant than...

[Summary of Video] Carl Gallups discusses Obama's recent interview in France wherein he again declares the United States to be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world.

A 19-year-old Illinois man was charged Monday with a terrorism-related offense for allegedly trying to join ISIS in its battle to carve out an Islamic caliphate in Iraq and Syria. Authorities said Mohammed Hamzah Khan of the Chicago suburb of Bolingbrook was arrested Saturday at O'Hare International Airport as he waited to board a flight to Vienna. From there, he intended to fly to Istanbul, Turkey, and then make his way into Syria or Iraq to fight for ISIS, they said. Khan was charged Monday in a federal criminal complaint with attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist...

To make transgender students and employees feel more welcome on campus, the University of California will add preferred names to student records and convert single-stall restrooms into gender-neutral facilities, UC's president announced Monday.

Chilling images have been captured of a woman hiding on her roof, cowering with fear, unable to see a masked intruder approaching her from behind. The Californian woman climbed out of her second-storey bedroom window early in the morning on Wednesday to hide from a man who broke into her home in Venice Beach, near Los Angeles. "Once I saw him in the house, I knew that we both couldn't be there," Melora Rivera told CBS news. "I knew that I didn't want to have a confrontation with him of any sort, you know, not knowing what his intention was."...

<p>CLIFTON — Some people have very nice cars. Some of those people park like jerks to keep the plebes of the world from parking too close.</p> <p>Kyle DeMattia, 20, of Clifton, encountered such a person Sunday at the local Red Robin.</p>

Previously unpublished correspondence between Hillary Clinton and the late left-wing organizer Saul Alinsky reveal new details about her relationship with the controversial Chicago activist and shed light on her early ideological development. Clinton met with Alinsky several times in 1968 while writing a Wellesley college thesis about his theory of community organizing. Clinton’s relationship with Alinsky, and her support for his philosophy, continued for several years after she entered Yale law school in 1969, two letters obtained by the Washington Free Beacon show. The letters obtained by the Free Beacon are part of the archives for the Industrial Areas Foundation,...

At first glance, this story doesn’t look like the sort of thing which would normally catch our attention, but it really does tie in to broader issues currently under discussion nationally in terms of race relations and how the police interact with those they serve and protect. Out on the left coast, quite close to the liberal Ground Zero of Hollywood, actress Daniele Watts ran into some trouble this week. (You may remember Watts from her appearance in Django Unchained among other roles.) As Reason tells the tale, she was outdoors, hanging out with her husband and talking on the...

A law enforcement official says he sent a video of Ray Rice punching his then-fiancee to an NFL executive five months ago, while league executives have insisted they didn't see the violent images until this week. The person played The Associated Press a 12-second voicemail from an NFL office number on April 9 confirming the video arrived. A female voice expresses thanks and says: "You're right. It's terrible." The law enforcement official, speaking to the AP on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation, says he had no further communication with any NFL employee and can't confirm anyone watched...